


Bed of Wyrms

by Xan_Fleshshaper



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:42:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28155534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xan_Fleshshaper/pseuds/Xan_Fleshshaper
Kudos: 2





	1. Tumulus

It had been beautiful once, the temple, a pillar of the old faith wreathed in light and crystal. Songs were sung in honor of such divinely perfect architecture. Now it was a tomb. Which of the bastard gods it had been devoted to was lost to the ages and none of the statues that dotted its concentric halls could give any hints without their heads. The only truly living things that had moved even somewhat recently within that forsaken place were an order of robber-knights intent on stealing anything valuable and they’d moved on at least three cycles ago. At one time the halls had been lit by sunbeam and rune giving an inviting warmth to countless halls inscribed with lilting scripture. The desolate passages now twisted upon themselves, choked with thick layers of vegetation and the humid warmth of overgrown synth-flesh. Anything now shuffling through that barren womb had no need for the torches that had long gone out, no need for the holy verse inscribed upon the walls, no need for life. Just an endless crypt wreathed in an age of silent festering. Then the screaming started.

She wasn’t sure where or who she was but one thing was certain, it hurt. Everything hurt. Being alive hurt. Wrenching the pneumatic tubes from her spine was easy enough though once the external nerve docks were exposed every movement of the air was like burrowing insects beneath her skin. It stung when the shards of hardened calcium dug into fresh palms and knees but it paled in comparison to the burning in her throat as a mix of perfluorocarbon and bile spilled across the floor before her. Birth was seldom pretty and being birthed from the remains of a dead and profane womb even less so. Still, as her shuddering subsided and her nerve relays adjusted to the flood of post-natal stimuli the loss of adrenaline that had clutched at her bones sent her falling to the floor. She wasn’t sure if she was sleeping, or dissociating, or dead. Just vaguely aware of the passage of time based on how the lines of internal fluids creeped across the floor. 

The sound of movement was what roused her, a wet dragging that moved closer and further at random, bouncing off the pockmarked walls followed by a gentle groaning that gripped her by the throat. Standing made her muscles ache. Of course it did. They hadn't actually held her weight in ages and though the tank had kept her alive it did little to stop the more severe atrophy, still it wasn’t enough to stop her from tiptoeing around the mess of jagged stone in an attempt to find some semblance of clothing. The nakedness reflected in the filthy water didn’t bother her exactly, she hadn’t spent more than a handful of seconds looking at herself since she’d woken and there was no shame to her movements. No covering of pointed breast or curling pubic fleece, the dazed young woman just didn’t think she’d make it as far bare assed.

The corpses dotting the room were arranged almost artfully, a clearly esoteric repose that made them more dancers than piles of bloated worms and jutting bones adorned with what skin and clothing remained to them. Her retching onto the floor had much more to do with the last of that putrid amniotic sludge leaving her body and absolutely nothing to do with the fact that in her shambling haste she’d stepped onto a body that had been laying prostrate at the base of the steps and just out of her sight. What flesh remained gave way to her foot like foul, stinking, somewhat flesh colored clay and the cursory job of wiping off the muck did little to alleviate the animosity she felt. It was barely even stealing if she didn’t remember who they were. She didn’t think it was at least, there was a hollow space in her memory that hurt to think about for more than a moment so the specific etiquette of proper grave robbing escaped her. Still the slick film coating the floor was making her want to thrash about so she’d apologize later. She wouldn’t.

From the strange symbols affixed to their garments she assumed they were priests, perhaps a cult of some kind though she did not know what god would abandon their flock in such a desolate place.The corpses seemed to all be dressed in similar colors, greens that glittered like emeralds and rich vibrant golds both of which had faded and leaked downwards over countless years leaving it all a murky brown that mirrored her own uncomfortable gaze. The girl could not remember such resplendent colors so she did not miss them. Just the same as the priest whose boots she’d pried off would not miss them, nor the trousers she took from another, or the shawl she took from who she thought might have been the high priestess judging from the tilted mantle on her head that had now warped to give her the appearance of a long extinct reptile. It was clearly the most extravagant piece of clothing amongst them despite the jewels having long fallen free and the embroidery along its edges fraying from all but the collar, the twisting glyphs indecipherable to her. What really mattered was that it was warm and while not exactly fashionable the pockets were mostly intact. 

What remained of the priestess’ hands were clutched tight around the only thing of value within the place that hadn’t already been worn to dust by time or carved up for the profit of long dead adventurers. A totem of sorts. The shape made no sense to her sleep addled mind but it was intact and held almost lovingly between gnarled hands clasped in stale prayer. Prying apart the stiffened fingers of a holy corpse was harder than she anticipated and her breath had grown loud before she was able to snap thumb and forefinger free with a sharp crack. It had more heft to it than she’d have thought from the delicate pose it’d been held in but fit easily enough into her pocket. She only noticed once it was secured that her surroundings had become completely silent. Tired breaths sounding all the louder in absence of that slick dragging. There. Movement. Just in the corner of her view something had slipped around the corner to stand in the remains of an archway otherwise blocked by twisted metal and debris. How had it even gotten past all of that? It was a man. Most of a man at least.

The face was almost featureless, just the barest indentations giving clue to where a mouth and nose might have once been. A mass of milky eyes staring blankly ahead from anywhere its biology deemed fit. This wasn’t what made her throat tighten in silent terror, the waxen face no more alarming than a scar or a missing limb. It was that he wasn’t all there. As her gaze passed down from the torso she realized that what she’d first taken for a skirt was the twisted mass of his legs extending into a fleshy pillar which had slipped through some miniscule crack in the rubble. Like the lure of an anglerfish only so much worse for having a face which called to her memory.

The creature's arms looked too long and far too thin to move at all yet that didn’t stop it from extending one spindly hand towards her and moaning in that almost voice that didn’t come from anywhere near where its mouth should be. 

“Keeeeeeey”

She didn’t ask what it meant. Didn’t contemplate exactly how its skull could unfold and swell like the bloated stomach of a sea claimed sailor when it lurched towards her. Some small part of her brain simply told her that this would be her death. That she too would be twisted and changed beyond all recognition of self. Towards the unknowable depths of that sunken city she ran, and in its hunger and curiosity It welcomed her.


	2. Wound

Traipsing through the marsh didn’t seem like a particularly bad idea at first. Sure the water was a bit murky but there weren’t any Nerada eels in this area as they preferred cooler waters and the tall stalks of memorial lily that gently swayed in an astringent breeze were almost pretty in that pale, gaunt way that most necroflora was within the Waste. When the hydrofluoric pollen began to dissolve your flesh it didn’t even hurt, as by that time your neuromuscular junctions and pain receptors were already being shut down. A clever evolutionary tactic of the lilies to ensure that anything foolish enough to drink from their habitat wouldn’t be capable of leaving and would soon become fertilizer. 

The trapped gases obscured the waters so well that from the riverbank you wouldn’t even be able to see the numerous waterlogged bodies that hugged the surface, mouths frozen in the wide gulping curves of screams that had cut off when their throat muscles seized up.

With a frustrated grunt VI tore herself free from another bunch of the damned weeds that had managed to tangle around her leg for what had to be the eighth time since she’d stepped into the marsh. The acid didn’t bother her at all given her already bulky frame was covered head to toe in a virosuit she’d built from a decommissioned gestation sleeve and whatever scrap accoutrements she could find in the gilded trash that fell from heaven. Still the roots in this area always managed to get twisted up in her transfemoral supports and even with helmet on and visor closed she didn’t fancy falling into the muck while it was this deep. As it is she was already running behind schedule and the Baron certainly wouldn’t be impressed by the meager haul she’d managed to collect so far. The emptiness of her satchel feeling far heavier than its meager contents would suggest.

Everyone back on the wand thought she was crazy to try scavenging during an overspill and normally she’d agree, but they weren’t the ones with hired thugs masquerading as knights waiting outside their shelters at all hours of the day. She was sure she could take them if she really needed to but she’d just repaired the door of her meager shelter and wasn’t too keen on doing it again. Why did they always have to kick down the door? The keypad had rusted away ages ago and she’d never found the right parts to even make an attempt at fixing it so it was more about intimidation than her actually hiding out. 

Without legs she couldn’t actually feel the riverbed squelching beneath her feet, just the slight pinch as the shock absorbers on each side adjusted to the shifting mud underfoot, internal pistons whining softly with each step. She’d actually expected the river to be much more flooded and was surprised to find that as she traveled onwards the water was actually moving. Not the soft ripples that hinted at some predator moving beneath the surface, but an actual current. Though it was called the Great River the snaking body of water that split the marshlands surrounding her spire didn’t typically move very much if at all, sure it became swollen when the burning rain fell particularly hard leaving plenty of newly freed corpses for scavengers to pick through for parts but this was different. This was as if the river itself had woken from a long nap and decided that now was the perfect time to pick up and leave altogether. She’d taken to wearing her belt as a bandolier with her pack slung just beneath it because the waters were always at her waist when she entered this stretch of land, now it barely reached past her shins. 

Then she saw the tower.

When she was young, before her parent’s accident, she’d sit in the tavern for hours listening to stories of the old gods who’d ruled in the time before the Blight came and calamity struck the land. They weren’t quite appropriate for children but as long as she sat quietly in the corner and stayed away from the spirits the tavern keeper let her stay. The tales of their great monuments had always been her favorite. The buildings of her wand were all a dull weathered grey outfitted with ancient tech scrounged from a hundred different places with the only similarity between one building and the next being that they were all squat and ugly, but the gods had lived in palaces. She’d never seen a palace, she’d never even seen gold but sometimes when she closed her eyes she dreamed of the divine monuments that had been lost to blight and time.

The tower was nothing like her dreams. Every inch of that cyclopean nightmare stood in illogical defiance of anything that might have been construed as beautiful. It was like a wound. A great festering spire pushing free of the earth so that it now slowly oozed a garish red onto the ground around it, The same color that stained her boots as she stood before its entrance.

_When had she moved closer?_

There was a buzzing coming from somewhere and it was making her head hurt. No not a buzzing, whispers. A thousand different almost voices that whispered of treasure, and glory, and power. She looked up at the entrance to that monstrous place and had truly intended to turn away and run, to claw her way through the muck on hands and knees if need be, anything to escape that clutching darkness. Her body didn’t listen. Even if she had the ability to scream there wasn’t anyone to hear her. Just a woman and the ever hungry mud that tugged at her from all sides. It was not a feeling she'd experienced before, not one that many ever come back from, but as the darkness enveloped her body so completely that she felt as if it were attempting to crawl inside , a single thought rattled around in her mind making her almost laugh with newfound panic.

She was being swallowed.


End file.
